Business Opportunities, Entrepreneur Resources and Tools, Business Reviews

The ever-growing potential of the Internet, even though bringing competitors right to your door step, does do us good.

Consider the Internet as a business marketplace, a business tool and a business resource.

Business marketplace - the growth of eCommerce and Internet business as a whole is creating the Internet as one of the largest marketplaces in the world. With billions of dollars market capitalisation, the Internet is, no question, lucrative.

Business tool - The Internet is an exceptional place for your business marketing and promotional campaigns. Moreover, with plenty of productivity tools available online, the Internet provides all the tool you require to run and market your business.

Business resource - In my opinion, the Internet is the best resource of all - you can seek leads, prospects, and potential clients on business directories. You can also look for information about your competitors - and what their customers think of them!

Good business resource: business directory

Business web directories - the good ones - offer you business leads and potential clients. You can also list your business in business directories to expose your business well.

However, with tens of thousands directories exist on the Internet, choosing a business directory that fits your need is paramount.

How to choose a good business directory

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You have found the location you’ve been searching for ages.

You know that the 3 most important factors for your store are location, location and location.

Here comes the classic question - Should you rent or buy for the location of your store?

Before you answer the question, please consider your vision in opening a store, or starting a business in general.

Are you building a business or an asset?

Your answer to the above question is crucial in determining your vision and focus in opening a store.

Building a business

If you want to build a business, I would like to suggest you to rent the location. This way, you preserve valuable resources and use them to build your business, instead - releasing your business cash flow pressure in the early days of your business.

The main drawback of renting a location is, well, paying for rent. Moreover, the property owner will put a pressure on your rental agreement, especially knowing that your store is successful.

Building an asset

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If you own a blog, you must know how to use social bookmarking services.

Social bookmarking, in a layman’s term, is a personal collection of your favourite bookmarks and share them with other members. You can also see what others bookmark.

Some of the widely used social bookmarking sites are StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and many more.

The main idea is to buzz an article or blog post to the community - if yours is good enough, you will see it in the front page and will get more attention from visitors and fellow members - ultimately, more fame and visitors to your blog.

Social bookmarking today: too artificial?

The potential of social bookmarking, and social media as a whole, is exceptional.

Techniques and methods to optimise the use of social bookmarking for the benefits of your business are discovered, developed, and shared among the community. This is the power, as well as the weakness of social bookmarking.

Weakness?

Yes - just like search engine optimisation (SEO), social bookmarking optimisation is a ’secret’ known to those involved in Internet marketing. The main idea is to get more links, as well as more visitors to your blog, increasing your blog exposure to both search engines and visitors.

Nothing wrong with those, actually. However, the social bookmarking service is, well, becoming more and more artificial these day. However, businesses will (still) reap the results, even though it is artificial!

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As you might already notice, there is a green badge on the right corner of this blog.

Yes - Noobpreneur.com is a proud Pro member of CO2Stats.com, a company that allow member websites to go green.

How Co2Stats works

The main idea is to make member sites carbon neutral. The following is how CO2Stats describes its service:

CO2Stats monitors your site’s environmental footprint and purchases renewable energy to neutralize it, so your visitors feel good about staying longer.

CO2Stats script placed on your site will calculate the number of visits, the length of visit and the power consumption estimates of your site, host server and visitors - all accounted and recorded.

The information will be used to purchase green energy at the end of each month, with an online certificate displayed when someone clicks the CO2Stats badge on your site.

There are currently 4 plans to choose, with 3 plans requiring members to contribute a certain amount of money monthly, and 1 free plan that allow your site’s first 100 visitors in a month to be carbon neutral.

The benefit of joining CO2Stats

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In my entrepreneurial journey, I follow a simple but powerful wealth building strategy: secure and diversify.

Secure means I secure a portion of income I received from my businesses, whether it’s online or offline, to some forms of protection: insurance, certificate of deposits (I don’t like the interest rate, but it’s a save haven for me) and precious metals.

Diversify means I invest another portion of income in order to make my money work harder for me, in the form of businesses, real estates and stocks.

But, first-thing first - have you protect your income?

Income protection: what and how

Whether you own a business or self-employed (sole proprietorship), you need to think of protection measures to secure your hard-earned cash.

If you own a business, you need to protect your revenue and cash flow by taking insurance that protect your business. Don’t forget to form a legal entity for your business (i.e. LLC) to protect yourself from losses and any legal actions. You should also invest, invest and invest - investing is a form of income protection for businesses!

If you are self-employed, you need to protect your income by taking a form of income protection insurance, that typically pays out a regular income if you are unable to work due to illness, disability or sickness.

Protecting your income by investing

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I own many web properties - I’m currently investing my time and resources to web properties due to the ever-growing market capitalisation of Internet business and investment.

Not only monitoring my web properties’ value and revenue, I also monitor my websites’ performance in the eye of search engines.

Why search engines? You promote to people, not to search engines!

Well, yes - that’s why search engine is paramount for your Internet business and web properties. Simple, search engines are your marketplaces - You advertise, promote and optimise your websites in order to achieve better placement in the them.

If you often heard about the over-emphasized Google PageRank, it’s because PageRank is one of the important indicator of how Google, as a search engine, view your site - eventually, it affect your placement in the search engine result pages.

Search engine ranking

Search engine ranking indicates where your websites are in the search engine result pages. The aim, of course, is for your website to be listed in the first page, usually the top 10 website for a certain keyword.

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Running online business does resembles its off line counterpart.

You need to monitor the performance of your back office operations.

In off line business, that includes monitoring financial management and reporting, monitoring your team performance, and even monitoring whether your coffee machine is in good shape and well-stocked :)

In online business, that includes monitoring your website performance, server performance, and tracking your website visitors and popularity.

Why you need to track your website performance

First of all, it is a good habit - you need to know your website’s current state in order to spot a potential problem or two in the future and receive a report on it.

Secondly, it is important to test campaigns to find your best practices. In term of website traffic monitoring, for example, you implement a new online certification, such as BizRate, for your online retail store. You may want to know the effectiveness of BizRate’s badge placement on your website. You can test the campain by monitoring the visitors traffic - is it increasing?

Tools to track your online business performance

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You work hard to maximising revenue and minimising operating expenses of your business. The purpose is to achieve better cash flow, and, eventually, more cash for your business… and for you.

In term of asset, you also work hard to increase your asset, including the before-mentioned cash, as your liquid asset.

However, you and I often overlook one liquid asset that is hidden, simply due to the fact that we don’t know it is exist or we are simply ignorant.

Well, this is the time that we stop not-knowing and being ignorant, because the hidden asset can give you something that is actually yours.

Tax refunds. ‘Ring a bell? :)

Hidden liquid asset: Tax Refunds

Consider these facts:

In 2007, 115,478 IRS income tax refund checks totaling $110 million - an average of about $953 per taxpayer - undelivered mainly due to unreported changes of name and/or address. In addition, an estimated $500,000,000 million in IRS refund checks that are delivered are not cashed and go unpaid every year - Source: unclaimed.com

An estimated £961 million in UK’s Government grants and tax credits goes unclaimed each year - Source: coleman-parkes.co.uk

(UK’s PAYE system - admin) …is taking nearly £300m a year too much off our wages and salaries, according to the government’s own auditor - Source: bbc.co.uk

The facts can go on and on - my point is, you have to start looking for refunds from your paid taxes because they are yours and the amount owed might actually surprise you.

How to claim tax refunds

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The real estate market crash today does left almost everybody in panic state.

Repossessions are lurking, while refinancing is more and more difficult due to the more cautious lenders.

Coupled with the real estate properties crash in value, with a predicted trend that will last over the next few years, home owners start seeking alternatives to avoid losing their home, or at least the value of their home.

What is sell and rent back?

Definitely in trend in United Kingdom, and a common practice for real estate investors throughout the world, sell and rent back - or buy and rent out on business owner side, is a solution for home owners and a lucrative business venture for real estate investors and business owners alike.

Sell and rent back - a niche market in real estate marketplace - means selling your home and rent it back at an affordable rate.

The reasons home owners sell and rent back, aside of today’s credit crunch and repossession possibilities, can be anything: simply to raise cash, illness, divorce, retirement, clear debts, and other personal reasons.

How sell and rent back works

For the home owners selling and renting their property back, the main idea is to cash out immediately and, in turn, rent their own home to avoid moving out, and in hope of a share in rising real estate value when the time comes.

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